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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 532, August 16, 2009 "Their real object is to control you and deny you joy."
Send Letters to editor@ncc-1776.org
RE: "Letter from Jim Davidson" A quote I recently came across, seems pertinent here: "I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."
Paul Bonneau
Birth Certificates and Unintended Consequences While care-giving a post-knee-surgery friend in Denver, I heard a plausible reason for Obama's reluctance to release his birth certificate. The guest host on the radio show was unknown to me so I cannot give him credit. He hypothesized: If your mother is Jewish, you are automatically Jewish because the religion follows the mother's blood line. If your father is Muslim, you are 'automatically'? Muslim, as it follows the father's blood line. In Muslim countries children typically belong to the father, not the mother. "Some Muslims who hold onto a strict interpretation of the Koran believe that conversion to another faith from Islam is apostasy and therefore punishable by death." "...such acts against Islamic sharia (law)," Christian missionaries captured in Afghanistan were sentenced to death, and conversion appears to also be punishable by death according to some strict Muslim interpretations. If Obama's father's religion on the birth certificate is Muslim, and with Obama's acceptance of Christ later in life, could he be placing himself at a disadvantage with Muslim nations? This is only theory but my hobby is attempting to connect the dots in the political world. So often, the stated reason has nothing to do with the real reason laws are passed, especially in DC. Even well-intentioned laws often end up screwing the very people they are meant to assist. 1) AFDC funded single moms and scores of millions of kids have grown to adulthood never knowing their father. And I persist in believing AFDC, the drug war and the unforgiveable lack of reading skills taught in our schools causes the violence and prison records associated with the inner cities. In suburbia, parents check the quality of the school district before renting or buying. The market functions to provide better education, but the poor living in the inner city (kept poor by their addiction to government checks) cannot vote with their feet and escape their poorly performing school districts. Welfare reform was ended early in Obama's presidency even though Sen. Moynihan was one of the designers. Moynihan knew what had been wrought from subsidizing single moms. If we want more of something, we subsidize it. 2) Fannie and Freddie were created to assist the poor in owning a home. Need I say more? The Community Redevelopment Act was written to end redlining. Banks were sued if they refused to make loans based on the neighborhood's chances of staying viable so the banks bundled those loans and got them off the books. And eventually, those who made loans were paid by commission rather than as bank employees. Bundling was not new, as banks have always tried to spread the risk in case of a local natural disaster like a Hurricane, but this time the formula on Wall Street was wrong. Loans became a commodity. 3) Both FDR and Nixon introduced wage freezes pushing companies like Bell Labs to offer health care to attract the better workers. Prior to these freezes, the work week had continued to drop. In the late 1960's some work weeks were 37.5 hours. As 'benefits' continued to cost more and more, the professions (no overtime) employees were expected to work longer than 40 hours. And we all know how the cost of healthcare rose when it was 'free'. That was also tied to Medicare where at first the upper limit on procedures automatically became the fee doctor's charged. 4) As Jefferson said to Charles Hammond, 1821, "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power,...it will render powerless the checks provided of one [state] government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.". Read 'The great American bubble machine' about Goldman Sachs for an eye opener. Sadly, Ron Paul was laughed at by the GOP but he was so right. We need to end the dollars bleeding into hundreds of bases outside of the US. We need to shine a light on the Federal Reserve (call your Senator to support an audit) and we need to end the income tax so corporate headquarters can return and capital is available for entrepreneurs instead of paying off cronies. Ron Paul's financial advisor was Schiff, now exploring a run for Senate against Sen. Dodd. Ron Paul's son is now a senate candidate in Kentucky. Unless you have dropped out and given up, help these candidates. Imagine two patriots running for Senate in 2010 Nydra Karlen
Bad? Stupid? A while back in another forum our Esteemed Publisher asked if the bad guys know they're the bad guys. The obvious answer is the bosses yes, the spear carriers, maybe. This leads to the discussion of whether evil or stupidity is the greater root of tyranny. Not so flippantly, the first part of the answer is: There's a difference? As Robert Heinlein pointed out and as Spider Robinson often reiterated, evil may be clever on occasion but it is stupid. Blinded by their own selfishness evil people do stupid things, the classic example being the story of the frog and the scorpion. Similarly lack of imagination blinds people to the consequences of their actions, causing harmful results. You don't have to be an ecofreak to see that not thinking out where they were doing led to people exterminating the passenger pigeon and nearly wiping out the buffalo (Historical note, Sherman, the same guy who burned Atlanta, encouraged this as part of the campaign to force the Comanche, Sioux and others onto the Rez in violation of treaty. This just sets up the next point.), an example of stupidity leading to evil. Please note that folly and ignorance can be substituted for stupidity here, just as wisdom and education can be substituted for intelligence. Please also note that many religions consider education necessary to moral development and wisdom to be a virtue. If I remember my long ago catechism classes wisdom is considered a Cardinal (big honking deal) virtue and is listed as a Gift of the Holy Spirit. Tyrants being evil people often demonstrate folly and ignorance and try to keep their subjects in a state of the same. Therefore Evil and Stupidity (Folly, Ignorance) are often one and the same. For the remainder of this article stupidity will therefore include ignorance and folly, but please note that the latter two are learned or corrigible by education, true stupidity is often inherent. Secondly stupidity often let's otherwise virtuous people go along with evil acts. Anyone could have seen that Hitler really was going to do some very bad things. Anyone capable of the Night of the Long Knives is capable of any of Hitler's other atrocities and treacheries. Yet people engaged in denial, which to me is a form of stupidity. Similarly, a failure to think out the morality of breaking one more treaty, wiping out a valuable prey species (I've got nothing against hunting bison for food or sport, but exterminating a species in an attack of HUA fever is another thing altogether), and genocidal policies towards the Indians is another example of stupidity in the service of tyranny, and don't even try to convince somebody raised South of the Mason Dixon Line that Sherman wasn't a tyrant and his works not tyranny. There is one big difference between stupid and evil. Evil people are driven by selfishness and on occassion their survival instinct combines with their cleverness to make them hold back. A statist congressman can nevertheless be trusted to vote progun every time if that is what it takes to win re-election. Similarly, BO has slapped down his staffers for pushing gun control laws and promise breaking tax hikes because he knows he can't afford to lose the votes such would cost him. Stupid people on the other hand just don't want to learn. They often get an idea in their heads and just won't back down in the face of facts. For example, do you really think we can generate enough electricity to meet six maybe seven billion people's needs without burning coal or using nuclear power? Yet try to get a "Green" to admit that if we don't want to be flooding the air with geenhouse gasses and other noxious junk the world has to go nuclear. Of course we can keep about four five billion of us in abject poverty instead. Abject poverty means your definition of a rat problem is your kids are going to bed crying from hunger and you've already eaten all the rats in your house. I submit people who go along with the second scenario are unable to imagine that they could be part of the starving masses. I can understand that people who are already in the priviliged class don't care since they know it can't happen to them. But their followers who don't get it that they can and will be part of the starved and huddling masses or who believe that protecting "Mother Earth" is worth the sacrifice are dangerously stupid, especially if they feel they have the right to shove that choice down everyone else's throat. As a religious believer I have been taught that there is a hope that evil men may convert to goodness. However, stupidity that refuses to learn or learn wisdom will always create the opening for the next generation of evil men, including tyrants. A.X. Perez
P.S. HUA Fever is often accompanied by FIM (Foot in mouth) Syndrome. Both are easily cured by shutting up, listening, and thinking (However flapping one's lips is often too much fun for even those of us who know this to apply this cure). The visual image of someone so afflicted is disturbing, grotesque and absurd. Consider the example of a sufferer in the current administration, Mr. Joe Biden. Dear Editor, Thank you for being the liaison to accept my refunding of Davidson's $25. Typically, he welched on his promise of: "And if a payment shows up, I'll even apologise for thinking ill of Royce's handling of the funds."
In my final reply to Davidson's absurd rant over $25, I note that he (again) helpfully noosed himself. If the Free State Wyoming was indeed (according to Davidson in [this]) a: "xenophobic outfit that opposes freedom of travel" without "ethical principles" and "being more about statism and less about freedom" ...then it begs the obvious question of why Davidson prolonged his FSW membership once he had discovered our true ugly nature. In fact, according to him, he still considered himself a member seven months after I allegedly kicked him out last April: I did not quit... I never resigned from FSW. (11.29.08 at 4:53 am)
Davidson's continued FSW membership can mean only one of three things: 1) he doesn't believe his own swill about FSW "statism" and "racism"
Liar, hypocrite, or schizophrenic. Y'all decide. Everyone comes around, eventually, about Davidson. Just wait until he finally evinces some vague "filthy socialism" of TLE. [Not a chance—Editor] For this sad exemplar of being one's own worst enemy while having the reverse Midas Touch (see bostontea.us/node/698), I have only this word of sincere advice: mentalhealthprofessional Davidson's persecutory delusions, poignant narcissism, hypersensitivity to criticism, and relentless histrionics are a wrecking ball to everything he touches. Government agent provocateurs do less damage. I will no longer read nor reply to that pathetic time/energy sink who leaves only discord, bitterness, and failure in his wake. Regards, Boston T. Party/Kenneth W. Royce
[And now I declare the end of all that—Editor] Re: "Letters from Laura" by L. Neil Smith Laura's comments display two of the greatest flaws in the logic of New Age Left Wingers. The first is to hold livestock, even beloved pets, as having rights equal in value to humans' rights. To them there is no difference between eating your pets and eating your kids. I love my pets. However my daughters, now full grown, have always meant more to me than even my "bestest little buddies," my most special pets. I would have remembered my pets with even greater affection for giving up their lives to feed my Laura and her older sister Nichole. Fortunately it never came to that, not by a long shot. The second is that they fail to realize that things really can get so hungry that you have to eat your pets or die, or that the policies statist leaders engage in will in fact lead us to such desperate straits more readily than those more appropriate to liberty. Laura objects to eating pets? Good for her! What is she willing to do to make this unnecessary? Not illegal, unnecessary. People will exercise the principle of "Necessity knows no law." Only people with a steady and reliable food supply can afford to not contemplate eating their pets. What is Laura willing to do to make sure people have such a food supply? Please keep in mind that free market systems seem to do this better and more reliably than any collectivist system. Live in a place where women are willing to wade and swim across a river into a foreign nation while going into labor to make sure that their kids were citizens of that nation and you will understand how desperate people can get. Live in a place where a woman will be be giving teat to her kid in subfreezing weather while begging and you will see how desperate people can get. And Laura, tyrants all over the world are sticking women with harsher choices all the time on a day in day out basis. So do you resent Neil for admitting he'll eat his pets if it gets that bad, or will you work with him and the rest of us seeking liberty and all its blessings, which includes well stocked supermarkets, to keep things from getting that bad? A.X. Perez
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